Addressing Negative Associations with the Term “Sustainability”

Addressing Negative Associations with the Term “Sustainability”
Activists Aren’t the Only Ones Who Care About the Environment

Notes from the Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics Conference
Santa Barbara, California
March 12-14, 2008

One of the first conversations I had upon arriving at the Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics Conference was with a sales representative from one of the sponsoring companies who expressed frustration with how loose people in her office are in their personal sustainability practices, even as the company is a model in product development and execution.

She described how fellow employees reacted to her advocating double-sided printing and how fellow residents in her upscale neighborhood get foggy-eyed when she explains that her household only needs the one car that is provided by her company to support her sales travel. Her husband bikes and trains to work. As an environmental engineer working on transportation systems, he is committed to walking his talk.

This sort of cultural phenomenon of complacency makes sense at a company with low turn-over, where 25-year anniversary parties are regularly celebrated. It’s also not surprising that America’s large upper-middle and middle class, with its limited understanding of the seriousness of the “eco” issues, is also expressing a strong desire to preserve the status quo.

Summing Up the Issues

• Negative stigma associated with environmentally-motivated activity
• Lack of awareness of the gravity of “eco”- related issues
• Inconsistent levels of understanding of “eco”-related impacts

Actions That Can Be Taken:
Design and Implement an Educational Engagement Program

The best approach is to design a program that is specifically targeted to address gaps in awareness or understanding that will vary according to each organization, culture and group of employees.

For companies and organizations where personal opinions/perspectives are clouding the ability to make decisions and get things done, a level-setting exercise like this can be a very useful vehicle to get everyone on the same page. This then creates a fact-based platform from which to move forward.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of the State of California, provided some very entertaining color to this issue when he explained that in government it’s even more difficult to get things done than in private industry. He asked the audience to imagine the role of governor as that of a painter having to consult with 120 artists (legislators) before placing a stroke of paint – consider the complexity of selecting color, thickness, weight and texture and discussing every aspect considered each step of the way.

Fairly, he commented that this consensus-oriented approach has its benefits but takes a much longer time to get anything done. I couldn’t help thinking that the State of California might also benefit from some general sustainability education (if this is not already happening), not to mention structured regular updates with new information and science that is becoming available every day.

Places to Start

Over the past couple of years I’ve been working with a global team of coaches and consultants to redevelop a grass roots sustainability awareness and engagement program for a main stream business audience.

The original program was developed by an NGO called the Pachamama Alliance http://www.pachamama.org/ which has been particularly successful working with indigenous tribes deep in the Ecuadorian rainforest to help preserve their land vis-à-vis impending oil interests.

In more recent years, the Pachamama Alliance developed a multi-media engagement program called the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium (the name is inspired by the indigenous Achuar tribe they are working with and their “dream” culture), see http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org/.

The program reviews the current sustainability context using interactive, audio-visual components and breakout activities. The topics it covers are:

• Where are we? -- Review of current statistical trends in the areas of Environmental Sustainability, Social Justice, and Personal Fulfillment
• How did we get here? -- Exploration of how unexamined assumptions have led to unintended consequences, the effects of which are increasingly being recognized and measured
• Where do we go from here? -- Review of emerging trends and solutions, and an interactive exploration of individual response through group breakouts

The newly redeveloped business program currently referred to as the BATD has been delivered in San Francisco, Boston and London. It is available to be delivered as a generic overview program or as a customized tool for specific business audiences or companies. For more information, please contact Revital Venture Network at (415) 436-9300 or info@RVNConsulting.com.

Free Web-Based Multi-Media Tools

With the mass availability of audio-visual and multimedia pieces through the internet, there are quite a few short, easy to understand videos that outline the current sustainability situation and why it’s important.

A few that I personally like to use as discussion starters (I recommend watching them in this order):

1) Trailer for a soon to be released feature length film: www.speciesalliance.org/video.php. This 10 minute ‘short’ outlines the current stats on species extinction. It presents the perspectives of various experts such as:

• Richard Leakey, anthropologist son of also famous anthropologists, Louis and Mary Leakey, who discovered some the oldest remains of man, a particularly famous set of bones called “Lucy”.
• Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, making the particularly compelling point that species loss is not just about losing the pandas and the polar bears, but rather the potential of losing species that are endemic components necessary for human life.

2) Ray Anderson Interview, excerpted from the movie The Corporation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcRDUIbT4gw. (You can also search http://www.youtube.com/ for key words ‘Ray Anderson’ and ‘Sustainability’). This 10 minute video has Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Carpets, largest global commercial carpet manufacturer, telling the story of how he was introduced to the topic of “sustainability.” He reports on how his company has responded to what he describes as a “paradigm shift.”



3) The Story of Stuff, http://www.thestoryofstuff.com/. A little longer (20 minutes) animated piece that presents a somewhat entertaining story, easy for a mass consumer audience to understand. It basically explains that companies and individuals have been operating in a linear fashion on a finite planet and that it’s just not sustainable over the long haul.

While producer Louis Fox, founder of Free Range Graphics, marvels at the popularity of this piece, Free Range Graphics has actually created more than one hundred short educational media pieces. A particular award-winning favorite is, The Meatrix, a word-play on The Matrix, where Leo the Pig chooses to take the red pill leading Moophius the Cow to reveal “the truth” about factory farming. The animated video ends at a website where consumers can search by zip code for retailers that offer local, sustainable and organic food in their area. This clip along with two sequels is found at http://www.themeatrix.com/.

Sustainability Transformation

Implementing the kind of change associated with something that might be called a “paradigm shift” or more commonly referred to in business as “culture change” or “corporate transformation” is not an easy task. Interface, the largest global commercial carpet manufacturer has been credited with successfully embracing this level of change and as a result ended up creating its own sustainability consulting firm to respond to requests for more information from companies interested in learning from Interface’s change process.

At the Wal-Mart CEO Summit in October 2006, Jim Hartzfeld, Managing Director of this consulting firm called InterfaceRAISE, explained Interface’s approach to what RVN likes to call “sustainability transformation”. Jim Hartzfeld is, by the way, the guy who dropped Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce, on the desk of Ray Anderson as he was preparing a kick off speech for Interface’s first environmental policy meeting.

With the commitment of Ray Anderson, Interface’s CEO, the company quickly succeeded at getting everyone aligned and working hard on a long haul path to becoming a sustainable company. This has included things like eliminating toxic dyes and materials, finding replacements to achieve comparable quality and execution, developing new types of carpets to eliminate toxic backings, and developing a commercial carpet leasing program that would allow the company to take complete responsibility for the entire life cycle of their products including recycling all component parts.

Certainly there’s a long way to go. After all, there still isn't an example of a truly “sustainable” global company – producing no waste, powered by 100% renewable energy and producing only products and services that provide either neutral or added value to the world with no negative impact.

In the excerpted video, Ray Anderson articulates the success Interface has achieved. Between 1995 and 1996, Interface experienced a $200 million increase in sales without any increase in materials extracted from the earth, alternatively described as materials throughput.

About the author; Revi Schlesinger heads RVN Consulting, a network of experts aligning to support the success of large-scale corporate sustainability integration initiatives. Continue the conversation at www.ReviSchlesinger.com/blog.html